Well, today I can finally spill the beans! Several months ago I had the idea of celebrating the launch of my book with a summer book club for you and yours.

And because books are always better shared, I’ve teamed up with the fabulous Sarah Mackenzie of the Read-Aloud Revival to create the Read the World Summer Book Club–a club that’s going to take us all around the world this summer, one book at a time!

Take a peek:

The Gist

Give Your Child the World has eight chapters of booklists in total, each one devoted to a different part of the world. Our book club will spend one week focusing on/highlighting each chapter!

All of your kids are invited to take part, whatever their age! Give Your Child the World includes book recommendations for ages 4-12, but teens are welcome to join in with picks of their own if they’re interested. And if your younger kids listen in as you read-aloud, that counts too!

The Goal

Read one book each week from a different part of the world (according to the calendar below). That’s it!

So on Monday of Africa week, for example, you could read a picture book from Africa at the breakfast table, and boom! Done for the week.

Sarah and I wanted to make the “official goal” super-simple, so that even families who find out about the club after we’ve kicked it off can still catch up and join in.

But you can also step it up a notch and create your own goal: one picture book a day, one chapter book a week, or have each child choose a book from their age range. With over 600 recommendations in Give Your Child the World, there’s plenty to choose from!

And just to clarify, your book choices don’t have to come from the pages of my book for you to join the club. Anyone is welcome.

But those who do choose all of their book picks from the pages of Give Your Child the World get double entries when it comes time to choose winners for prizes–woot!

Prizes, you ask? Yes, over $1,000 worth! Keep reading to check out their awesomeness below.

The Calendar

Here’s the basic plan for the rest of the summer:

Note: If you’re joining us after the club has already started, just jump in according to when you find us! There’s no need to go in order, so you won’t be missing out.

For the most part, this follows the order of the chapters in Give Your Child the World, with the exception of North America week, which we bumped up–you’ll see why when that week arrives!

Each Monday on the dates above there will be a new post up here on Simple Homeschool with extra resources you can easily use to highlight learning about that part of the globe throughout the week.

And since it’s summer, we are keeping this super low-maintenance. Think of it as the “stress-free summer book club.”

Reading, learning, exploring. Done.

The Downloads

We’ve partnered with a talented designer and dear friend of mine, Sarah Whitlock, to create a collection of adorable printables:

new regional maps to use each week,

a low-maintenance log for your readers to keep track of (and rate) titles,

coupons to keep your family motivated,

and a certificate you can print out at the end of the summer as a souvenir.

In other words, we’ve done the prep work so you can get straight to the fun! Downloads will be released in each new post on a Monday right here.

Looking for the printables you need to get started with the summer book club? Head here!

The Hashtag

Keep track of your family enjoying the book club all summer long with the hashtag #GiveYourChildtheWorld on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram–each week Sarah and I will highlight a few readers’ pics to remind ourselves that we’re all in this together.

And if you want to take pics with Give Your Child the World in front of any landmarks where you live or travel this summer, that would be fun to include as well!

The Prizes

Oh yes, back to those prizes. Thanks to the generosity of several sponsors, we’ve gathered over $1,000 worth of amazing prizes that celebrate the world!

Please visit these companies and their offerings below as you check out the prizes and plan your upcoming school year. I’m so grateful to them for participating.

Just check out the loot (one winner per prize!):

A complete set of Pin It Maps, value $220

Multi-cultural children’s books/Bibles from Zondervan, value $150

The Adventurous Mailbox Explorer Package, value $100

A set of global books hand-picked for YOUR family by Jamie, value $100

A year’s subscription to Around the World audio stories, value $95

A six month subscription to Little Passports, value $85

A Story of the World Bundle from Well-Trained Mind Press, value $65

A six-in-one geography puzzle set from Geotoys, value $57

An Africa Montessori Brainy Kit, value $50

An Asia Montessori Brainy Kit, value $50

A North America Montessori Brainy Kit, value $50

A history/geography wall set from Educents, value $35

A Great States! Board Game from Educents, value $28

Every participant who reads at least eight global titles during the summer (one for each region) can be entered to win a prize at the end of the book club. And if all your book selections come from Give Your Child the World you’ll get double entries!

** The ironic truth is that the majority of these global-themed prizes can only be shipped within the United States. There are a couple of exceptions, though, so international readers are welcome to enter to win! If you do, I’ll be sure to choose a prize that would be available for your location.**

This is great! Ordered my book, can’t wait to get started! It’s exactly the antidote to the extreme television watching we’ve had going on whenever we aren’t outside 😋. I even order some cardstock lol. We’re all in!

Oh yay! I’m so excited!!!!! I requested a bunch of books from our library for the first chapter as soon as I got my copy of the book last week (pre-ordered!), I probably got enough to stretch it out the next couple weeks til this starts! I’m super excited about this!! Thanks for ALL the hard work you’ve put in!!!

I got the book last week and went to the library two days later. We have been enjoying lots of books from the Africa section in the past few days. Read all about Nelson Mandela this morning. LOVING this book!!!

This book looks AMAZING!! Any chance it will come down in price in the Canadian Amazon store (it’s double the US price)? I really wanted to get the printed book rather than the Kindle version. 🙁Amanda’s latest post: Of birds…it’s always the birds

I was planning on doing a chapter a month but this will be a great start for us. The only thing is I am not on any of the social media that you talk about. Will we still be able to enter?Rosemarie Paulson’s latest post: hair no more

I had the exact same question. Thank you for allowing us social media shirkers to still participate and enter for prizes!! This Summer Reading Book Club sounds awesome!!! We love to read and we love to learn about other parts of the world. I wish we could take our family on global field trips – but this will be a great substitute.

As an international/adoptive/expat family we are really excited about this! I love the highlight on the world and getting out of our own little confort zones through books! I just ordered my copy of your book and cant wait to start it and this book club! Thank you! 🙂

Brilliant! Thanks ladies. I enjoyed the RAR podcast Jamie and Sarah -and especially loved that little old Audrey of the Outback rated a mention. We love the Audrey series! Hope you enjoy your northern summer while we enjoy our southern winter, which will be made that mush nicer once my copy of GYCTW arrives. x

Hi Jamie
My family would love to join you and everyone else, even though we are having winter here in New Zealand. I love your book thank you, I was so excited when it appeared on my kindle and I have wanted to say thank you to you. I can see it has been a labour of love and the dedication is amazing. We have just started Apologia Around the World in 180 days for our History/Geography Curriculum and we are beginning with Africa so perfect timing as I have just received several wonderful books on Africa arrive in the mail. One I think was in your book. Thank you again, I follow Simple Homeschool and I value the online support through all the contributors, especially as we are new to Homeschooling this year.
Fiona

Oh this is FABULOUS! We are SO in!! I know that you wrote your book for the world, Jamie, but I secretly am thinking that it was just for our family (American mommy/daddy with Korean-adopted kids) :-). We are going back to Korea next year and this will be an awesome way to kick off our global-travel-bug! So fun to see all of our favorites in your Asia section. I just cried reading your family-making stories in the beginning of your book. Oh, the love and challenge and feelings and unknowns and humility – we know all of those! Thank you so much for working on this project so that we are graced with its beauty and families everywhere can look to their neighbors to create peace in the world. Enjoy your book launch – we are clapping over here in Oregon!!!

YES! The idea is that doing this in community gives readers a simple way to put “feet” to our good intentions and take a few steps toward our goals of raising lifelong readers! Happy to have you join us, Abigail!

Our family is super excited to join in this summer! We love the book and are already enjoying several of the recommended reads! My kiddos are preschool and younger, so we will mostly be picking from the ages 4 – 6 category 🙂 I’ve had my eye on those brainy kits for a while, but getting to join in with a book club for the summer with prizes like that is just icing on top of an already amazing accomplishment – love this book – thanks so much for sharing!!

Yay! We are so excited! I placed holds for the multicultural week already, and I ordered our first globe, a new atlas, and Children Just Like Me to have on hand as permanent resources!!! This is just what we needed this summer to make our reading a little more intentional.

My friend in the U.S. will coming over to the Philippines in September and she will be bringing your book for me — how I wish it were sooner! I prefer the print version of books as much as possible so that’s why I didn’t order the Kindle version. Anyway, I’m hoping we can still join in the fun! Times like these I wish we had good libraries around, like you all have in the U.S.!Tina’s latest post: One Question You Should Ask Yourself Every Day

I had already ordered the book before I got to the end of the podcast and then saw this. How fun will this be? Of course now it trumps all my previous plans lol but that’s totally ok because this just seems like a ton of fun. See you back here on the 27th.

So excited to join in the reading fun! This was the motivation I needed to order the book. My kids are already flying through our library’s summer reading program, so we needed something more. Can’t wait till the 27th!

I pre-ordered your book, but I am still waiting for it to arrive here in Australia. Fingers crossed the book arrived in time for us to join in the book club, it sounds great. Thanks for all your hard work.

LOVE IT!! I just ordered almost all of the picture books from the multicultural section I was planning on doing this through the summer with the picture books (even though my kids are older, the picture books are low key and still fun to look through). I can’t wait to hear what others say throughout the summer! As I told in you in my email, we are very excited about the book!Sharon’s latest post: Our Homeschool Essentials

What a great idea for a book AND a way to generate excitement about summer reading and this big, wide world we live in! Most of my kids are grown up now, but having homeschooled them around the world, I can definitively say there’s been a need for a book like this for a long time. Now Im inspired to start lining up new books and adventures for the next generation of our family. Thank you for all your legwork!

I can’t tell you how excited I was to see my 2 favorite homeschool resources team up!! I already got my pre-ordered book and have already been using the ancient book ebook you sent as a bonus. I was already excited to read the book, but this program will make it even more fun. One of my goals is to raise a global family, traveling is a huge part of our homeschooling experience. And your free ebook absolutely changed our homeschool life forever for the better, thank you so much!
And Sarah, Read Aloud Revival is a key part of our ongoing homeschool days. Thank you both for everything you do!!

I can’t wait to get started! I ordered your book yesterday. We were sitting here racking our brains on what to do this summer. This is perfect. In my mind, I want to go all out and eat that area’s food all week, dress up how they do and do some of the same art. But, that is in my mind. Reality: It’s summer and we are going to read. I did bring out the globe, though!

Thanks for writing this! I’m always on the lookout for quality kid’s books. I heard about the book club on RAR, and am planning to play along with my soon to be 1 year old. I figured he might not be too interested, but at least I’ll get some read aloud practice and see what my library system has available for multicultural books for when he’s older!

Heard your interview on Read Aloud Revival, LOVED it, and we’re in! Just bought the book, and we’re so excited to join!!! The timing couldn’t be more perfect, as this has been a topic heavy on my heart for the last year … actually blogged about it a while back. Thank you for creating such a fabulous resource. 🙂

So excited to be joining in this summer! Our focus for my 11yo next year is Global Village/Governments and I ordered your book to use as a resource. It is amazing! I’ve really enjoyed looking through the book lists and planning several country/region studies that correspond with them. Thank you so much for such an excellent resource!
I was thrilled to realize that we could jump start our next year’s study in a gentle way through the book club~ can’t wait to follow along!

Jamie, this is just perfect! I’ve been working on our family’s “meals from around the world” where we’ll feature a continent each month. it takes a while to prepare – research and dishes to cook- so i haven’t officially started. we differ on our order of continents but i’ll change my order to coincide with your summer reading plan! i think it’s going to be fabulous!

Hello! New here (Thanks Tsh!) and I really love this book journey. The idea of how much reading and research and time must have gone in to this endeavor is mind boggling yet totally awesome. I’m a HUGE fan of research and learning (so I think I’ll fit right in here).
I do have one question, though. I noticed that some of the prizes are Christian oriented and the book is a best seller in Christian family genre (which is awesome and CONGRATS), however I am not a christian. I’m a pagan and while I have absolutely no issues with my son learning about other religions (he has a kids New testament story book and is familiar with the concept of Jesus and Christian churches) I am wondering if Christianity is a major theme in your book and the ones you have chosen. Even with being open minded and embracing others’ paths to their divine and spiritual beliefs, it can be hard to immerse myself fully into a book or blog or other form of media if there is a lot of any particular religion in it.
I would think that since it looks to be an incredibly diverse selection of books from all over the world that there won’t be an over representation of any one religion in particular and that even with religious references it will still be an incredibly enriching book journey. But I just want to know beforehand what role religion has played in the actual content.
I have many amazing christian friends and although people assume I’ve never owned a Bible, I actually have 3 different versions of it 🙂

Please don’t take this comment as any sort of criticism or judgment because it’s most definitely not and I still want to order your book and take part! I think Jesus was a pretty amazing being. Living in the Bible Belt, though, has shown me a lot of those people who claim to follow him are actually very, very unlike Him. I sometimes just politely ask those who have noticed one of my pagan tattoos or jewelry to go read Romans 14. We are all sisters and brothers on different paths and I think any of our chosen deities would much rather us appreciate and respect those paths and love each other!

Okay I will stop rambling! Gist of my comment is I’m a pagan, noticed a bit of Christianity throughout the post and on amazon genre, and just want to know what to expect in that regard 🙂

Here’s what I said: “Give Your Child the World shares our family’s personal story of becoming a global family, which includes our faith journey as Christians. But it was important to me that the book be accessible to families of any faith–so the reading lists (the bulk of the book) are mostly secular. Any religious content within titles in the booklists is noted. I’d guess that a spiritually-minded person would love it, but if someone doesn’t want any spiritual references at all it wouldn’t be for them.”

Thank you so much for replying and for understanding my reasoning for asking. I was fairly confident that I had accurately picked up on you and this project being inclusive and diverse in religion/spirituality as much as it is in location and culture. Without getting too “woo woo”, I pick up on some really amazing vibes from you and the community you have brought around you – positive, encouraging, wise, and a tribute to the teachings of Jesus.
Thank you again for responding. And, as it is a pagan holiday with the Summer Equinox, I hope it will be welcome for me to wish you and your family a very Blessed Litha and fun summer!
-Empy

The Lemiere family from France would love to join the Summer Book club. Unfortunately, we won’t get your book until…August 18th so we might follow your Calendar with books of our own list. We will make one especially for the occasion. That will give us a nice activity for the Summer ! We have one soon-to-be first grader and and one soon-to-be 6th grader. Looking forward to enjoy the World Summer Book experience :). Marie

Oh my word, the Strouths are in!!! Since we got your book, I’ve maxed out our hold allowance at the library (twice!) with awesome titles that we would’ve never picked out on our own! I’ve been meaning to say thanks, Jamie, for your hard work and for pouring your heart into this project. I hope that the release of this baby of yours out into the world has been as much a blessing on your family as it has been for all of us. Awesome book lists aside, I’ve especially enjoyed reading your family’s story. What a sweet little peek inside for someone like me who’s been reading and wondering about the Martins for a few years now! Thanks again for all you do, Jamie. I’m headed over to Amazon to review Give Your Child the World while I still have a couple minutes of quiet time left… 🙂

The Harr family is IN!! I just ordered your book and am looking forward to joining in the fun of the book club. I have 3 kids and this is just what we needed to get everyone reading this summer. Thank you!

This looks great! We live overseas and I have a couple questions: are the titles available on Overdrive or Kindle and what ages is t geared toward? We range from four to 16 in this house. Hoping this works for us…!

Hi Kim! Give Your Child the World has book recommendations for ages 4-12, but older kids can still join in with your own picks from other places if you’d like! Some titles would be available on Kindle and others aren’t–you’d just need to do a bit of research to see. Maybe taking a peek at the sample chapters might give you an idea: http://bit.ly/24nbN9Y

I absolutely love this! We are IN! I just ordered your book, so it will be here in time and we’ll get our books ordered to be ready to start on the 27th! What an amazing idea, thank you for helping our summer be that much more enriched and productive!

I just started flipping through your book and discovered that we already own at least 1 book recommended for each of the first few weeks! I’ve placed a few holds at the library as well. This is going to be fun!

I just listened to you on Inspired to Action’s podcast and I was so inspired! You gave me goosebumps repeatedly. 🙂 I love your heart for the world. That is exactly what I want to foster in my children. I had already been thinking about your book, but I went right to Amazon and put it in the cart. Can’t wait to get it and join in on this summer club! Thank you!

I’m so excited for this, Jamie! Our six-year-old son’s interest in other cultures is just beginning to blossom, so the summer book club will be perfect for our family. From the look of things I might even get my own shelf in the library’s hold section when everything I’ve requested for the first two weeks arrives at our local branch! 😉 I had pre-ordered your book, but it’s been sitting on my Kindle waiting for me to finish a long list of other books first. The book club fixed that, and I’m reading it now! Thanks for all your hard work on this. Your book is proving even better than I’d expected (though I knew it would be good since you wrote it!), and the book club promises to be a blast.

Just ordered your book on Kindle. Can’t wait to start! We live in NYC and our family is on mission with God to glorify Him among the nations. So this is perfect! And I thank God for the resources and encouragement you’ve been sharing with us.

Hi Jamie! I’m so excited about this book. I’ve been holding onto a Barnes & Noble gift card for several months waiting for the perfect book to purchase. I ordered “Give Your Child the World” the day it released and was so excited when it came in last week. I’ve enjoyed the first few chapters and am enjoying reading through your book recommendations. We’ve already picked up several of your recommended books from the library and we’re ready to go for the Summer Book Club! Could you please tell me how to access the downloads from Sarah Whitlock?

I’m a public school teacher but your book is exactly what I was looking for as a resource for my students for next year. My preschool-age daughter and I will be participating and exploring the world over the next eight weeks. We are excited!

Hi Jamie,
I think i may have ordered this book before it was in print, did you run a special price if pre ordered? I may be confusing it with something else but i am quite sure it was this book. could you check to see please?

Your book arrived yesterday! Yeah! I’ve got my library requests done. I’m heading out soon to pick up another favorite. Thanks so much for doing this. My girls have outgrown the summer book clubs we have done in the past. This will be really fun!

This is our official “summer curriculum” for homeschool. I picked up the first stack of books from the library today and it was like giving candy to a toddler; I’m probably much more excited about this than my kids are, but hopefully that will change soon. I’m enjoying your book and all the ideas from parents sprinkled throughout about how to have a global perspective at home. It’s been very inspiring already! This is such a wonderful resource; thank you for all the hours spent putting it together!

I just found out about your book and ordered a copy yesterday. In the meantime I started going through the sample chapters online and compiling a list of titles that I picked up at the library yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised at how many they had available! Within a few hours (before I even had a chance to go through any of them), my 13-year old son had finished ALL of them (I picked up between 12-15 from the beginning of the Africa list) and was telling me which ones he liked best! I’m so excited for your book to arrive and to continue to bring the world into our home via the books you’ve recommended. May God use it to give all of us more of a perspective and heart for His world.

Got our Kindle copy of your book and can’t wait to start tomorrow! My 14yo will be participating as well as my 6yo. My favorite memories of summer when I was growing up was the summer and I can’t wait to share that with my kids this summer!

Hi Jamie! I found you through the Read Aloud Revival:) I just love what you and Sarah are doing with this and your missions in general. So grateful I found these amazing resources and like-minded mamas! I just ordered your book on Amazon but was wondering if you could give me a couple book titles from the first chapter (or the multicultural one) so I can order them from the library while I wait for your book to arrive? Thanks so much!

And we’re off……..WE did a Breaky Book Club here and read ‘This is the way we go to school.’ then the boys chose a country each from the book to find out a little more about. The 3 yr old chose Hawaii and we were amazed at what a beautiful place it is. The 5 yr old chose Egypt and we tried to say hello in Arabic 🙂 Thanks for the great prompt to do this. Still waiting on my amazon order of GYCTW to arrive down under….come on mail lady!

We are SO excited to start this adeventure!! My 6 year old was in tears last week because we could not take a boat to Africa to save the rhinos. When I told him we COULD take a book there he was skeptical, but intrigued. Thank you for putting this book – and the reading challenge together. We are a family of travelers at heart who are learning to find alternate ways to explore while are littles are our pocket book are small for travel.
—- also. Sorry for the long comment. But I have to share this as well. I walked into one of my favorite stores yesterday and ‘randomly’ found an amazing print of a world map w a Helen Keller quote. It was my Eiffel Tower, and I bought it right then and there! <3. Again. Thank you for sharing your heart and doing much work putting this book together!! We are loving it already!!!

I adore Helen Keller, Wendy – what an inspiring kick off to the summer book club for you! If you haven’t done so already, I’d be so grateful if you could leave a review on Amazon about the book–they help so much: http://amzn.to/1OeVyWy

Looks like we got here just in time. Was even able to download the book into our kindle. Looking forward to a fun reading program for the kids. We too do alot of traveling, although we stay here in the U.S. My husband is a traveling construction supervisor so we go visit him as much as possible. The kids and I load up the minivan and off we go, exploring our beautiful country. My kids are 9 and 7. We haven’t been to every state yet but we are getting there. 🙂

Your book is purchased and Amazon says it’s on the way. Last week we enjoyed the YouTube links after lunch. We also got Maps and Boxes of Katje from the library. (The kids especially loved this because of our Dutch heritage!

Love the book and am secretly hoping my kids pick books I want to read! A quick question, is there any way to quickly see which books are available on Kindle? We are travelling through Europe (now and over the next few months) and are not in one spot long enough to place and wait for a book order. Having books available on Kindle would be fantastic!

Hello! My son and I have been enjoying reading the book selections from Give Your Child the World! Can you tell me what we need to do to enter for the prizes? I have just been keeping a list here at home of whatever books we have been reading, but how do we let you know what they are in order to qualify for the drawing? Should I be logging them someplace else on your website? Thank you for this wonderful journey around the world! 🙂

There won’t be a club per se, Roberta, but I know many readers who will be using all these posts as a template to guide their reading/geography studies throughout the school year. We’ve even put together a page to help folks find everything easily: http://simplehomeschool.net/read-the-world-page/

so i’ve read tons of these books w. my girls and we are ready to log our reading and register to receive prizes. i can’t for the life of me figure out how to do that, though. can you help? is there a simple link to the registration for reading/prizes you could send me?
thanks! jay

My granddaughter and I have been reading through the books all summer, but now I can’t seem to find the link to register for the prizes. I have looked all over and I keep getting sent back to the same pages of your website. What am I supposed to be looking for to find this link?

We had so much fun participating in the Summer Book Club. When I entered the giveaway, I did’t realize each kiddo could enter separately. So, I have one entry with both kids’ names and one entry with one for a total of 2 (for two kids.) 🙂

What a fantastic idea! My mother in-law gave me and my sister in-law each a copy of your book Give Your Child the World so my kids are doing the Book Club with their siblings, Grandma, cousins, aunts and uncles! We thoroughly enjoyed the multicultural book club and now we have a new love for Africa too! My Librarian is a Camel made us laugh! My daughter baked bread from Loaves of Fun and my son made LEGO houses of many different cultures. Bulu has been our favorite read-aloud so far but honestly, we have loved them all!